Prior art equipment has been used for automatically feeding, inspecting, authenticating, counting and sorting currency documents, such as bank notes. Document feeders were provided with infrared sensors for determining various positions for a document feeder arm which moved a stack of documents into a reciprocating feeder plate. A vacuum was applied to holes in the feeder plate for pulling singular documents against the feeder plate. A vacuum was also applied to a separator head, which faced opposite the feeder plate and separated documents from the singular documents being pulled by the feeder plate into transport conveyors. The documents passed, one at a time, between the feeder plate and separator head to transport conveyors.
The transport conveyors carried the documents past various devices for inspecting the condition and determining the currency value of the documents. The documents were sorted according to document condition and currency value, and stacked in appropriate discharge bins. The documents were then moved to another location at which they were bound with a strapping tape. The documents were often manually moved from discharge bins to a strapping station where the documents were bound.